Cingular Lights Up 3G Around Northern Cal

It’s not too big of a surprise that various wireless providers would focus on building out high speed wireless broadband options throughout Northern California. Whether its 3G, muni WiFi or even one day WiMAX, early adopter dominated regions like Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (that includes San Francisco) are pretty obvious candidates. But so are less high profile cities in and around Central Valley and beyond.

Cingular, the largest wireless carrier in the US, says in the next few weeks it will publicly announce that its 3G (HSDPA) network is available in cities in Northern California like Stockton, Fresno, Modesto, Sacramento and Vallejo. The company says the service has been available in San Francisco and San Jose since December 2005, but we haven’t heard of too many people using it.

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Cingular spokesperson Ritch Blasi says the networks in Stockton and Fresno were already turned on earlier this month. The speeds are supposed to get between 400 kbps to 700 kbps. (Anyone in those areas want to test it out and report back?)

Cingular is pushing to offer 3G in cities across Northern California, but there are other wireless broadband options moving in. Sacramento is looking at a muni WiFi option, as is San Francisco. San Jose, Mountain View, and the entire Silicon Valley region has WiFi plans. While Mountain View’s GoogleFi is already up and running, most of these networks won’t be live for some time, so that gives even slow-moving Cingular ample time to sign up 3G subscribers. Will you sign up?